A recurring motif permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the news reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
